# Wikipedia

Wait a second, what is *Wikipedia* doing in this repo?

Though virtually inoffensive from a tracking and privacy perspective, there are cases where access to `wikipedia.org` can be blocked (due to government censorship, corporate firewalls, etc) or (more rarely) Wikipedia itself blocks requests (e.g. Tor, blacklisted IPs). Alternatively, [surveillance of Wikipedia readers](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html) of certain topics of interest [has been a thing](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/43995/wikipedia-suing-nsa-over-mass-surveillance-internet/index.html) already [in the past](https://www.jstor.org/stable/43917620), which is creepy to say the least. 

If any of these are of your worrying, the resources in this page may help.

## Wikiless

A web-based frontend for Wikipedia, copying its features almost completely. It's so transparent that you can forget you are actually not on the Wikipedia domain. The main (demo) instance of it online is [Wikiless.org](https://wikiless.org).

Source code for this project is hosted [here](https://codeberg.org/orenom/Wikiless), on Codeberg, alongside with a list of other public instances (if you host your own, please add it there!)

## Browserless alternatives

### Kiwix / Zim

Dubbed "Wikipedia in a file," [Kiwix](https://www.kiwix.org/) is a reader and server for super-compressed document files called [ZIM](https://wiki.openzim.org), which greatly compress gigabytes' worth of data in a way that can be quickly searched and accessed afterwards. By using a local reader like the Kiwix app (available on F-Droid) and a recent-enough ZIM dump of a section of Wikipedia, you can have a very reliable way to read Wikipedia offline, like during a long trip or flight.

The OpenZIM wiki itself offers locations for many [user-curated data dumps](https://wiki.openzim.org/wiki/ZIM_File_Archive) of many sections of Wikipedia and other Wikis (such as the ArchWiki) with sizes varying from sub-GB text-only archives to 100GB+ dumps complete with all pictures and videos of articles. Alternatively, you can search the Internet Archive's section of ZIM files, or even build your own.
